Does Windows do this for you?

Posted by DFS_0019287@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 19 comments

Does your OS do this for you?

/etc/cron.daily/installation-birthday:

                  0   0
                  |   |
              ____|___|____
           0  |~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~|   0
           |  |           |   |
        ___|__|___________|___|__
        |/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/|
    0   |       H a p p y       |   0
    |   |/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/|   |
   _|___|_______________________|___|__
  |/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/|
  |                                   |
  |         B i r t h d a y ! ! !     |
  | ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ |
  |___________________________________|

Congratulations, your Debian system "gato" was installed

4 year(s) ago today!

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LuminanceGayming@reddit

my linux doesnt do that either because i distrohop more than once per year

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JockstrapCummies@reddit

There needs to be more and better support than just Distrohoppers Anonymous. This sad addiction has destroyed enough lives already.

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Espionage724-0x21@reddit

Nah OS-hopping is fun! Can't get too-complacent :p

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Espionage724-0x21@reddit

I haven't kept an OS install for longer than a few months in years to know :p (but kind-of cool!)

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FryBoyter@reddit

Does Windows do this for you?

No.

Does your OS do this for you?

No.

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Mikejwhite5@reddit

My Arch install just hit 5 years and still runs like new, while my Windows partition gets reinstalled annually thanks to updates breaking things.

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Malthammer@reddit

No operating system I’ve ever used does this. Thankfully.

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LeeHide@reddit

at it should be. you don't need to ship man either, just fortune and cowsay.

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we_come_at_night@reddit

If it's Windows, it probably it does on like 1000th reinstall

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I don’t like windows much at all, I’ve been a Linux person for the past 20 years and it’s been a major part of my job and career progression for the entirety of that… however I have to say from a server perspective, AD is a really solid windows product which things like freeIPA can’t really compete with.

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Barafu@reddit

On Windows it is supposed to be recorded, and you can run

 systeminfo | find "Original Install Date"
Original Install Date:         06/05/2025, 17:59:17

But I get weird results since this installation is at least 3 years old.

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readyloaddollarsign@reddit

yah, but that doesn't show a goofy birthday cake, so fail, right?

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Barafu@reddit

There is `cowsay` in `winget`.

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DFS_0019287@reddit (OP)

One of the things I like about Linux (and UNIX culture in general) is that we're willing to have fun and not take our OS seriously as an Important Corporate Thing.

That said, I will file a bug with Debian because the cake has 6 candles instead of 4. 😛

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